Fathering cancer

WORKING at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria may have been harmful after all. Children of men who had been exposed to radiation while working at the plant have twice the normal risk of leukaemia and lymphoma, according to a major new study sponsored by the nuclear industry.

Arguments have been raging for 12 years over whether radiation from Sellafield is to blame for a local cluster of childhood cancers. The suggestion that there was a link between the doses of radiation received by fathers and the incidence of leukaemia among their children was first made in 1990 by the late Martin Gardner, an epidemiologist from the University of Southampton.

But his hypothesis has since been heavily criticised. Many experts have argued that large numbers of people moving in and out of the area, which is thought to spread infections that might increase the risk of cancer, can explain all ...

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